Emma Goes to the Arctic

An American Socialite's Trip on a Soviet Icebreaker, 1931.

Abstract

This article tells the story of Emma Burnham Dresser's 1931 voyage on the Soviet icebreaker Malygin. Emma was not interested in Marxism or social experimentation. Nor was she fleeing discrimation or religious persecution.  Instead, she wanted an exotic experience; hence, Emma's story introduces a new kind of traveler to the scholarly literature on the history of tourism to the Soviet Union: the wealthy socialite looking for her latest adventure.  By focusing on contemporary press coverage of the trip, we can also see how American interpretations of it differ from the narratives offered by Soviet media, and how Emma's actions defied American conceptions of the Arctic as a space where men went to prove their masculinity.